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When your produce is starting to pile up in your kitchen prior to canning / preserving, be very careful about piling it on your stovetop if you have pilot lights. (I now have a lovely raw squash with a small, circular cooked spot....)

I can use cukes all day .... same with pickles.... and they have been a lot of fun to grow so far.

The bright side......I could have over planted sometthing I didn't like.

At least after reading this, I know to resist temptation and not plant anymore. As well as the cukes have been growing, it's crossed my mind to rip out the stuff that hasn't grown well (Orange peppers), and replace with cukes.

Definately think the four monster cukes I have going will be enought for now ... based on my 12-day old crack-cumcumber that I suspect was fed raw meat at the nursery;

Do not install a SFG on a lopsided slope and spend hours carrying away hundreds of pounds of heavy clay, rocks, and rubble. Also, do not attempt to improve this soil with amendments when Mel's Mix can be created.

Spinach and lettuce seeds sometimes take longer to germinate than is described in Mel's book or the seed package.

Be proactive about pests. Cover the whole area with bird netting to discourage cats and ground squirrels. Put copper tape around the beds before you even think about planting vegetables.

King Solomon was indeed a very wise man. He said "This too shall pass", and boy was he right!I have learned that I (not plants) can survive the vicious bug attacks, no matter how many plants perish.I have also learned that plants are remarkably resilient, and after being attacked by killer insects who eat them in and out, if you give them good care, will still come back and reward you with more fruit, as did my cucumbers and squashes.I learned that store bought leggy seedlings take a long while to assimilate, but once they do, there's no stopping them.I learned that you do need to plant each vegg in its right time. Some of them just don't appreciate the summer heat as much as others.I learned that I can get really carried away and intensely obsessed by gardening.I learned that compost bin isn't exactly smelling like bed of roses, and no matter what the glorious reviews say, flies do get into them, and they breed inside. I also learned that some sort of worms make their way into the compost bins, and I am willing to believe that it's a good thing.I learned that while growing watermelons on trellises is a very cool idea, they aren't that productive and probably not worth the time and effort (namely making swings and running out into the garden to check whether they fell overnight or not) - organic watermelons are dirt cheap at the market and you can get ton of them, rather than waiting for them to ripen on a trellis.I learned intense feelings of hatred and extreme disgust when it comes to SVB and pickle worm. They turn beautiful into sick and ugly and leave bacterial wilt behind.I learned that the prettier the bug is, the deadlier it is to your plants.I learned that I will be doing it all over again next season, no matter how many bug attacks I need to endure.

Oh, I have learned so much about the euphoria of seeing things grow, and also about how they can go wrong. Insect invasions, fungi infestation, planting too many of this, too few of that, and this other in the wrong place or at the wrong time. Still, it is so rewarding to harvest my veggies when things work out. I optimistically planted some Fall crops just today: lettuce and spinach, beets and another try with the peas. Wish me luck.

You must cover cabbage, broccoli and brussels sprouts. No amount of Neem oil seems to keep the cabbage butterfly away. I didn't get to eat any of my early cabbage, and only some broccoli. I planted some for the fall and covered them with a row cover.

You must somehow keep rabbits out. A few can clean out your spring garden in a couple mornings.

Voles like new potatoes. They like them a lot...

You must test compost for sprouting seeds, otherwise you will have a hundred little tomatoes coming up in your fall broccoli plot.

You must clean up dead plants in the fall, otherwise everything that goes to seed will be sprouting. (Anybody need a hundred basil sprouts?)

Weedless_in_Atlanta wrote:I have also learned that plants are remarkably resilient, and after being attacked by killer insects who eat them in and out, if you give them good care, will still come back and reward you with more fruit, as did my cucumbers and squashes.

I'd add to that not to give up on a seedling just because it was damaged. After investing a few weeks on heirloom tomato seedlings that get chomped on by a chipmunk, you can't start over in late spring. But thankfully, those little sprouts want to keep growing. My formerly leafless Cherokee sprouts are now 7 feet tall!

I've also learned how primitively satisfying it is to eat food right from the source without even washing it off. Why not wash it? Because you know everything that you put on it during the entire life cycle. Sun, water, and TLC. And you can taste them in every bite!

I've learned to not plant green beans next to tomatoes, because when the tomatoes rear up and threaten to eat the entire back yard, the beans get lost! They're in there somewhere, and I even found a couple of beans yesterday...but I can't find the vines!

I did... planted pole limas in one corner, and pole beans in the other corner, thinking that was far enough apart. Well, it wasn't.... they grew into each other. Not a bad thing, but they have matured at different rates, which for me means that the pole beans are just about done now at the end of September, but the pole limas are still going strong. Makes it really hard to tear out the pole bean vines.

No matter how much you hate to put more than one seed per spot cause you hate the thought of loosing those seedlings when you have to thin them out---------do it anyway---cause you have no idea how many you are going to have to sow again two weeks later when you finally accept the fact that they just aint gonna germinate.It just saves on growing time to do it right the first time.